Archive for November 2012

Broadcast live on the Internet, this event twas viewed by more than 15 million people around.

Health Care Without Harm founder and President Gary Cohen joined a panel Al Gore in New York to talk about the role of sustainable healthcare in addressing some of the world’s climate and environmental challenges.

CAHA Convenor Fiona Armstrong joined climate scientist Professor David Karoly, Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Don Henry, and Al Gore in conversation to discuss the impacts of climate change on human health and how we can respond.

Getting policy traction: The 2012 Climate and Health Alliance report Our Uncashed Dividend produced in partnership with The Climate Institute has hit a chord with media, community, and policymakers.

It was released in 2012 to widespread media coverage, has been the subject of many invited presentations, and has stimulated and informed the first ever submission from the Australian Government on health to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process occurring in October 2012, written following a meeting with CAHA in August 2012.

(The SBSTA is one of two permanent subsidiary bodies to the Convention established by the COP/CMP. It supports the work of the COP and the CMP through the provision of timely information and advice on scientific and technological matters as they relate to the Convention or its Kyoto Protocol. The Nairobi Work Program is set up to to assist all Parties to improve their understanding and assessment of impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change; and make informed decisions on actions and measures to respond to climate change on a sound scientific, technical and socio-economic basis).

The Australian Government submission proposes that further work be undertaken to “understand the physical and psychological impacts of climate change on individual and community health” and suggesting that this work could “draw on the experience of health sector workers, as a useful resource in understanding and addressing the climate change impacts on health”.

Leading epidemiologist and public health researcher Professor Tony McMichael has been honoured with a two day festschrift in Canberra to celebrate his work on the occasion of his retirement from the National Centre for Population Health and Epidemiology at Australian National University (NCEPH-ANU).

Current and former colleagues, students, and members of the national and international public health community gathered to reflect on, and pay tribute to, the work of the man described as “the world’s leading scholar and commentator on the relationship between global climate change and human health.”

However while Professor McMichael might be best known for his climate and health research – as Dr Maria Neira from World Health Organisation said: “for W.H.O., Tony is the guru on climate and health” – presentations from fellow researchers and students over the two days demonstrate an extraordinarily broad ranging research career. Professor McMichael has made seminal contributions to scientific and human understanding of the health implications of tobacco, the health risks from lead production, uranium mining, rubber production, and ozone depletion as well as climate change.

Many of those present recounted how their careers had been influenced by Professor McMichael’s’ work, particularly his seminal text: “Planetary Overload”, published in 1993, which outlined the threats to health from climate change, ozone depletion, land degradation, loss of biodiversity and the explosion of cities.

Professor McMichael’s work as a public health researcher and epidemiologist has been instrumental in the phasing out of lead in more than 100 countries; key to legal decisions to determine what constituted scientific proof in relation to harm to human health from tobacco; and profoundly influential in highlighting how the health of the natural environment and the health of the biosphere is fundamental to human health.

Reflecting Professor McMichael’s diverse interests and love of the arts, the festschrift was not only a stimulating intellectual event, but featured an art exhibition: the Contested Landcapes of Western Sydney, curated by Tony’s colleague and friend from ANU, artist John Reid. The festschrift celebration dinner in the Great Hall at University House featured the remarkable talents of Tony’s daughter Anna McMichael on violin and Daniel de Borah on piano. Other family members also at the festschrift included Tony’s other daughter, anthropologist Celia McMichael, brother and sociologist Philip McMichael and wife Judith Healy.

Colleague and joint festschrift organiser (with Jane Dixon and Tony Capon) Colin Butler closed the conference by saying that it would take “months to fully explore the breadth and depth of Tony’s career” and “even then we might not fully understand it”. We did however, as Colin said, catch a glimpse, and what an inspiring glimpse it was.